Chapter Text
On the day of the coronation it rained. Their tents were weatherproof of course, but they’d been made in haste, designed to protect against the cold before all else and so it was that Fingon was woken long before dawn by an insidious drip of cold water drumming on his forehead. Likely his nerves would have dragged him from his bed regardless, but it did little for his mood.
The ceremony itself would be dry at least; the royal pavilion, where the House of Finwë convened for breakfast, was oiled silk that had survived the trip from Aman. There was no sign of their father and so Fingon and Aredhel squabbled over the fruit preserves as they had for time immemorial while Turgon feigned exasperation. Finarfin’s children joined them, resplendent despite the weather; Finrod, rainbow jewels dripping from his fingers, his ears, his neck, looked more a king than his father, his uncle, even his grandfather ever had.
“Is the camp likely to flood?” Fingon asked, licking hard-won strawberry jam from his fingers and looking out at the grey haze. He could barely see the next tent over.
“We dug drainage ditches,” said Idril. “And they’ll work. I supervised.”
“It’s not likely to be a problem,” Turgon agreed, brushing porridge from her golden curls. “At least not logistically. It does not look well though, after all that fuss we made about the rising sun being a herald of our victory. Our best predictions said the weather would clear but it’s showing no sign of it.”
“The rain will pass,” Galadriel said. She did not elaborate but she did not truly need to. If she said it, it was likely so.
“And even if it doesn’t I have a thought to warm you in its place,” said Aredhel. “The Fëanorians will have to ride over in this. It’s hard to look kingly when you’re dripping on the carpet.” She wrung out her own hair to demonstrate.
“If they bring Huan this ceremony is going to be unbearable,” said Finrod sadly. “I despise the smell of wet dog.”
“He shan’t stink worse than his master.” Aredhel wrinkled her nose. “That idiot! can you believe that he attacked you?”
“It was a misunderstanding,” Fingon lied. “The only thing to take harm was his own dignity.”
“His dignity will be the least of his worries next time I see him. He still hasn’t apologised. For anything.”
“If you’re waiting for an apology, little sister, you’ll be waiting a long time,” said Turgon. “The sons of Fëanor have necks so stiff it’s a wonder they can bend to put their boots on.”
Galadriel liked to pretend herself too dignified for their jokes and arguments but she had a weakness where their cousins and late uncle were concerned. “It’s not their necks that are the problem, it’s the sticks shoved up their arses.”
Fingon choked on his tea and hoped the ensuing coughing fit would explain the redness of his face. Aredhel and Finrod opened their mouths, both no doubt intending to say something even coarser about Fëanorian arses, and Turgon covered Idril’s ears in anticipation.
“It makes riding decidedly uncomfortable, I admit,” said Maedhros Fëanorion, ducking in through the tent flaps, his brothers and a bedraggled herald following at his heels. “Good morning, cousins.”
“I’m sorry my lords, my ladies,” said the herald. “It didn’t seem proper to ask them to wait outside to be announced with the weather what it is.”
The Fëanorians wore their father’s colours, silks and velvets in shades of flame and blood. They were proud and beautiful and fierce, shining circlets upon their brows, swords at their hips and fire in their eyes that shone brighter than any jewel.
Any jewel save three.
“We did not expect you so soon,” Fingon said lamely.
“Evidently,” said Curufin with a delicate curl of his lip. Fingon supposed the tone was warranted though the affectation of cool disdain was rather spoilt by his waterlogged clothes and the rat's tail tangle of his hair.
Galadriel rose to her feet, her dignity wrapped around her like a cloak. “Please excuse me, cousins, but my brother was right; the stench is more than I can bear.”
“She’s one to talk of sticks,” said Celegorm as she stalked past him. “Never mind her hair, you’d think Laurelin’s light shone out her-” Huan, ever more tactful than his master, sat down upon his foot and the jibe ended in a yelp.
“Is there tea?” Maedhros said loudly over the cursing. “I would give my right arm for a cup.”
That embarrassed everyone into quieting long enough for servants to draw up more chairs and whisk away wet cloaks. Fingon took the opportunity to study his cousin as he took the seat across from him and accepted a cup from one of the servants with a murmur of thanks. Maedhros wore a dark red tunic that would have brought out the copper in his hair were it not darkened by rainwater. He alone had not dressed as a king; the discreet silver embroidery at the neck and cuffs coupled with the minimal jewellery were as much a statement as his brothers’ finery. Fingon, in peacock blue, gold in his hair and sparkling upon his fingers, felt almost as gaudy as Finrod in comparison. Maedhros had gained back a little more weight - still too thin but the better fitting clothes made it less obvious. Even the ruin of his left cheek looked less hollowed out, less wrong than it had the last time Fingon had seen him.
“Your face looks different.” He wasn’t named ‘the Tactful’ after all.
“No longer stoved in like an old pan, you mean?” Unoffended, Maedhros drew back his upper lip with a gloved finger to show the gleam of metal and pale ivory. “Curufin’s work.”
“They have forgiven you then?” Fingon asked, a furtive glance confirming Curufin was sufficiently distracted by getting a wriggling Celebrimbor out of his wet cloak.
“I’m not sure they ever will but Curufin is a craftsman first and foremost. To see a flaw in the world that he might mend nags at him like - hah - a missing tooth.”
“I’m glad.”
“No less than I. Subsisting on soup is terribly boring. As is talking about myself. What of you, Fingon? How is your arm?”
“It does not pain me.” The cut had closed cleanly though it itched abominably and it was a constant battle not to pick at it, though he could hardly say that to Maedhros.
“So stoic. I have a gift for you anyway,” Maedhros said, pulling a small clay jar from his pocket and handing it across the table. “It ought to help with the scarring - I haven’t noticed any difference myself but I suppose these things take time.”
Fingon opened it to find a salve that smelt, not entirely pleasantly, of honey and vinegar. “Curufin again?”
“Amras actually - he’s more skilled with medicines, not that either of them will ever admit it. Take it,” he said when Fingon hesitated. “Let one of us stay pretty.”
“I’ve never minded scars,” Fingon said quietly.
Maedhros looked away, down to the table where his hand rested over his teacup so that the rising steam swirled between his fingers. “I hope you’d be less reckless if you did. But you are crown prince - or will be in a matter of hours - and appearances matter, to your subjects if not yourself.”
“Your father spent half his life in a sooty leather apron with no shirt beneath it,” Fingon said, groping for any way to change the subject and realising, as Maedhros’ smile flickered, that he had not picked the wisest topic.
“And we all know what your father said about him,” Caranthir said, looming at Fingon’s shoulder. How could someone so loud move so quietly?
“We do and so I see little point in bringing it up. Sit down, little brother. Did Maeasson bake those seed cakes?” Maedhros said, gesturing to a plate. “You always did love his cooking.”
Maeasson had fallen to privation upon the Ice and Fingon would have dearly loved to say so. Crown prince he reminded himself and offered the platter to Caranthir, his jaw set so firmly that his teeth ached. Even one moment of tea and talking almost normally was too much to ask.
Caranthir ignored the plate but did sit as instructed, dropping a waterproof map case on the table, nearly upsetting the teapot. He snatched it up before it could fall though not before is slopped a dark streak of liquid across the pale, varnished wood. “Manners!” Maedhros said mildly.
“Get on with it,” Caranthir said, gruff with embarrassment or gruff because he knew no other way to speak; Caranthir was so often rude and so often embarrassed it was hard to know the cause.
Rolling his eyes for Fingon’s benefit, Maedhros turned to where Tugon sat with his daughter. “We’ve been surveying the surrounding area and I was hoping to speak to an expert on improving our fortifications.”
“I’d be happy to discuss them with you,” Turgon said curtly, sounding anything but.
Maedhros raised his eyebrows in a mockery of consternation. “I suppose you will suffice, though it was Idril’s wisdom I had intended to seek.”
That stole some of Turgon’s stiffness; as much as he despised flattery directed at himself, he was incapable of resisting complements to his daughter however patently untrue.
“May I?” Idril said, half scrambling onto the table in her eagerness to open the tube.
“By all means, my lady,” Maedhros said though, rather than leaning in to look at the tube’s contents as everyone else had, he drew back from her as if from a flame. Idril didn’t notice, too absorbed in shifting plates and tureens to pin the curling edges of the map.
This time it was Fingon that leapt to catch the teapot as the table shook and rattled beneath her weight. It was a fragile, porcelain thing, decorated with blue flowers and he wondered how it had survived the Ice and who had bothered to carry it with them. He set it down out of the way glancing about the tent and noting with no small relief that no one was actively engaged in combat. Aredhel and Celegorm were arguing, yes, but he could see no weapons which for the two of them was positively civil. Finrod had drawn Curufin into discussion of a loose setting on one of his rings - Fingon shot him a grateful look and he winked ostentatiously. Maglor, diplomatic as ever, was engaged in a polite if not particularly enthusiastic conversation with Orodreth and a silent Amras. It had been not ten minutes of fragile peace but Fingon let himself hope.
“-would command a good view from here,” said Turgon, sliding the salt cellar into position. “I don’t think a watchtower is ambitious enough, rather we should build a fort, something which would allow us to control the entire pass.”
“I can see the wisdom in that,” Maedhros said. “But I’m not sure we have the resources to keep something so large supplied. At least not yet.”
“How many horses do you have?” said Idril. The question might have been related to the supplies issue or might have been because she was very young and very fond of horses.
“Not as many as we’d like. Two hu-”
“Don’t tell them that,” said Caranthir.
“Two hundred from Valinor,” Maedhros said pointedly. “Plus near a thousand traded from the Sindar or bred ourselves.”
“We,” said Fingon, in the spirit of sharing, “have less than two score. The crossing was not kind to them.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Caranthir’s skin should have been too dark to show his angry flush and yet somehow he managed it. “Is a crown not apology enough?”
“Cousins, we would be happy to come to an arrangement regarding the horses,” said Maglor, looking glad of the excuse to break from his conversation with Orodeth. “In fact amongst the gifts we brought for our uncle’s coronation are-”
“I’m not sure,” said Turgon, cold as the wind upon the Ice, “that you have apologised at all.”
“Maedhros already has,” Fingon said quickly. “We consider the matter settled.”
“Did he now? Did you do something about that stick, Fingon?” Curufin drawled. He shuffled Celebrimbor out of his lap so that he could rise freely should he need to.
“Do you expect us to grovel?” snapped Caranthir, pushing back his chair and coming to his feet. Turgon stood with him, taller by half a head, and Aredhel and Celegorm leapt up too, while Amras, still seated, let his hand drift down to the knife at his belt. Idril cringed as the table rattled beneath her and the cups slopped tea onto their map. The teapot teetered for the third time and Maedhros leant to catch it, reaching instinctively with the wrong hand. His wrist nudged it and he recoiled, hissing, while the pot fell to shatter on the floor with a crash and a burst of tea and ruined crockery.
“Oh. Damn,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t valuable,” said Fingon, not knowing or caring if that was true, only a little saddened at the thought that it had survived so much only to shatter here. He glared at Turgon who sat, chastened, and drew Idril into his lap. Aredhel gestured to the servants - they had been keeping well back from the brewing argument - and one hurried forwards to clean up the mess.
There was a hushed, awkward bustle as the royal family collected itself and pretended that it hadn’t been on the verge of a shouting match. Caranthir’s flush was certainly due to embarrassment this time and Fingon hoped that it would keep him quiet.
Maedhros’ foot nudged him beneath the table. “There are only so many times they’re going to fall for that,” he whispered, grey eyes flicking to the shards of crockery. “Where’s your father? If he doesn’t get here soon I’m going to be forced to feign hysteria to distract them. Or,” he added with a dark glance at Caranthir, “perhaps I shall become hysterical in truth.”
“I’ll go find him. Try to hold out.”
“Send a serva- Fingon, don’t you dare,” Maedhros hissed, but discretion was the better part of valor and Fingon sprinted out into the rain to find his king.
***
The floor of his father’s tent was a mosaic of robes in a hundred shades of blue and Fingon had to pick his way carefully between pools of cobalt silk and puddles of midnight velvet to reach him.
His father sat before his silver mirror, the crown in his hands and his unbound hair spilling down his back. “I’ve worked all my life for this and now, holding it in my hands, I wonder what on earth I was thinking,” he said, addressing Fingon’s reflection. “A pretty band of jewels and metal and yet it has been the breaking of every man to wear it.”
Fingon swallowed. It was his father’s place to provide comfort and council, not his own. “Grandfather’s reign was long and wise. And it was not the crown that killed him.”
“No, it was his pride, which was my brother’s downfall also.” Fingolfin frowned at himself. “I have never lacked for pride myself.”
That was something of an understatement. Fingon picked up a swatch of sky blue samite and let it run through his fingers, the slick cloth catching on the calluses on his palms. He placed it down on the bed. “Our uncle was mad by the end - all could see it but him. That will not be you. If nothing else you have raised three clever children to stand between you and your own destruction. We could swear that we will take no oaths on your account but…” He smiled a little. His father didn’t.
Fingolfin placed the crown down upon a side table and turned to face his son. “When I imagined my coronation I always hoped my brothers would be there to witness it. Finarfin I miss dearly and Fëanor I wanted in the front row, his face all twisted up with spite the way it always was whenever the attention was on someone other than him. But that is a petty, unworthy thought.”
“You will be a better king than he ever was.”
“You are my son and heir; how could you say otherwise?” But his father was smiling as he said it. “Fingon. There’s porridge in your hair.”
“Ah!” Fingon swatted at it ineffectually. “I came to fetch you for the first challenge to your rule; breakfast with our cousins.”
“I assume you don’t meen Finrod and his siblings,” said his father, rising and stepping to Fingon’s side to help. “Hold still- there. I suppose it would not be fitting for me to start my reign by hiding under the bed? No? Very well, send in Caraspen to help me dress and let them know I’ll be with them momentarily.”
“Of course. My liege.” Fingon bowed ostentatiously low to make his father smile again. “I’ll ensure that no one dies in the interim.”
***
Sprinting back towards the pavilion, Fingon was relieved to see that nothing was on fire. A reason to be thankful for the rain. He slowed - the footing was treacherous - and then slowed further when he heard angry voices coming from behind the tent to his left.
He should have announced himself. The line of Finwë did not skulk about, eavesdropping from the shadows but then they also did not murder their friends and neighbours so what was one more break with tradition? He peered around the tent, trusting to the rain and his thick, hooded cloak for concealment.
“-tell you again. Did Grandfather teach you nothing?” said one of the men. Even had Fingon not recognised his voice, his height and the sling left no doubt as to his identity. “ A king’s first duty must be to his people and that will never be so for any of us.”
“I know that as well as you. Were it not for duty, the moment we received their demands I would have-” The other speaker cut himself off sharply. Maglor, his voice sweet and musical even when flustered. “We are reclaiming the Silmarils for the good of all Noldor. Did we not come to Beleriand to build a kingdom in their light?”
“We did. But until we have them we are bound and we must not bind our people with us.”
“If this were truly about the oath I would tell you that, though we swore, the House of Fëanor is more than the six of us. Our nephew is free of it. He is young, yes, but he would have advisors-”
“Advisors?” Maedhros laughed. “No doubt he would. Is this Curufin’s idea or yours? Either way, it is a monstrous thing to do to a child.”
“But,” Maglor went on as though he had not heard. “This is not about the oath. Or reconciliation or duty or any of the thousand justifications you’ve given - were any one of those your reason I might agree with you. No, you are doing this because you are afraid and want the crown as far from yourself as you can get it. You are not acting rationally-”
Maedhros laughed again, louder and less controlled. “Do you want to hear something funny? They crushed my fingers and plucked out the nails but - this is the good part - only on my right hand. Now you’re the wordsmith, tell me, is that ironic or merely serendipitous?”
There was a silence. When Maglor broke it his voice was tight. “You can’t end every argument like that.”
“We play the hand we’re dealt, little brother.”
“Don’t. I will support you, in this as in all else, but I love you too well to hold my tongue. There is still time for you to call off the coronation and give yourself a chance to think about what you’re doing.”
“Your opinion has been noted. If that is all…?”
“I suppose it is. Until the ceremony.” Maglor bowed, perfunctory, and strode away, boots squelching dully through the mire.
Maedhros remained where he was, watching his brother’s retreat, his left hand clutching tight at the stump of his right wrist, his knuckles white. He made no move to head back inside, though long minutes passed, and he was not wearing a cloak.
Fingon could watch no more and stepped out from behind the tent with an affected air of nonchalance and a cheery cry of “enjoying the weather?”
“Fingon!” Maedhros turned to greet him, his hand relaxing and his face gone so effortlessly cheerful that Fingon would never have suspected there had been an argument had he not witnessed it.
“Is all well?” He nodded in the direction Maglor had fled.
“Oh everything’s a production with Maglor. He wants to compose a song about your heroics upon the mountain. I told him he should ask your permission and he went off about artistic integrity.” Maedhros lied so easily now. Or perhaps he always had and Fingon had never caught him at it when they were children.
“He can’t!” Fingon said, playing along as gamely as he could. He began to walk in the direction of the pavilion, and was relieved when Maedhros followed without comment.
“It’s Maglor. He wrote one about Alqualondë.”
Knowing what he knew of his cousin, that much might be true. “Oh, that’s tasteless even for him.”
“He calls it ‘the Fall of the Noldor,’ if you can believe it. I almost throttled him with his own harpstrings the first time he played it. So as these things go it’s not such a bad idea. You were very heroic-”
“Heroic indeed!” Careful not to touch him, Fingon ushered his cousin under the inadequate cover of the pavilion’s atrium. “Do you think he’ll include the bit where my knife slipped and I almost cut my own hand off?”
“-and I’m sure I swooned into your arms very prettily-”
“You screamed until you retched.”
“I am sorry about that tunic. Then Thorondor, majestic in the rays of the setting sun-”
“It was noon, that bird was terrifying and he stank like the bottom of an aviary.”
“Fingon the Ungrateful they should call you! And I doubt he smelt worse than I did.”
“True,” Fingon said. Maedhros was still smiling but it was a sharp, unlovely thing, nothing like the smile a handsome boy had once worn in Valinor and nothing like the one he had so clearly practised in a mirror so that the twist and pull of scar tissue would not render it grotesque. This one looked real. “I’ve missed you.”
“It hasn’t been so long.” Maedhros ran his hand through his hair, as though it was only now he had noticed how wet it was.
Fingon resisted the urge to reach out and smooth the spiky clumps back down. “I don’t mean these last few days. I miss all the things we used to do together. Stealing Grandfather’s wine and getting drunk on the palace roof. Putting frogs in our brothers’ shoes. Going hunting and staying out days longer than we meant to because we lost track of time-”
“Lost track of time? Is that how you remember it? We were lost, Fingon.”
“You said you knew exactly where we were!”
“And I was a liar even then,” Maedhros said glibly. Did he know that Fingon had heard? Surely not. “Why did you think I kept insisting we look for ‘ore samples’? I didn’t want you to panic.”
“I carried those rocks miles for you.”
“And I treasure every last pebble, I promise. They’re all back in my rooms in-” He sighed. Rallied. “I think I saw some frogs in the reeds down by the shore and Caranthir has been tiresome as of late.”
“Sorry to say, I don’t think we’ll have the time.”
“They’ll be there after the ceremony, frogs and brothers both. Only a few more hours to live through,” Maedhros said, his smile gone false again.
***
The sun did shine as predicted. When his father rose, the crown upon his head, the rain faltered and the clouds fell away to reveal a sky as blue as his banners. Galadriel looked smug and there was a small amount of huffing and eye rolling from the Fëanorians but his father looked regal and dignified and so very proud that Fingon could not help but beam.
Everyone, even the Fëanorians, bowed at the appropriate time and afterwards only Maedhros failed to applaud though did, as he joked later, answer a philosophical quandary in so doing.
There was feasting afterwards, and music and dancing. The food was not as plentiful as in Valinor nor the finery so resplendent but they were Noldor after all and there was much that could be done with dried caribou meat, seal leather and a little ingenuity.
The crown prince might have been expected to take up his harp but this was a night for reconciliation and so King Fingolfin called his nephew up to sit beside him and play and sing of glories past and yet to come. Maglor did not, to Fingon’s relief, sing the Noldolantë or of Thangorodrim, but kept to pretty songs and ballads from the west, tired phrasing and trite sentimentality given new meaning by the sincerity of his voice.
Fingon would have left at that but he knew his duties well and so he danced with the daughters of his father’s lords and jested with their sons, or danced with the sons and jested with the daughters - it made little difference so long as he was charming and visibly so. He might have enjoyed himself if it hadn’t been for his cousins - and even his own siblings for he could not trust them to keep the peace - lurking at the edges of his awareness.
Thankfully there was no further trouble; they knew the battle lost and all seemed resigned to it or at least prepared to bide their time. Caranthir came over to tell Fingon his earrings were ugly and made him look like a bat, then pressed a pair of silver studs into his hands. They were lovely things fashioned in the shape of eagles so detailed they looked about to take flight. Fingon smiled graciously and accepted what he assumed was a peace offering in what he imagined was the spirit it had been intended and Caranthir stalked off again, seemingly satisfied.
When the light began to fail and his feet were blistered and his head swimming with wine and empty chatter, he slipped outside in search of fresh air and peace.
The sunset was not the mingled light of the Trees but it was beautiful all the same, a fire kindled upon the western horizon that scorched the drifting clouds with reds and oranges. He watched it and quite pointedly did not think of burning ships.
From somewhere in the darkness he heard his sister’s cackling laugh and a male voice whining in what he honestly hoped was pain. Ducking away down a canvas alleyway to avoid them, he tripped over a pile of shields abandoned upon the marshy sward and almost went down on top of them.
“Watch yourself, sir,” called Ninaeldis, a trifle late. She and some twenty others of his soldiers were sat about a brazier not far away, warming their hands and picking at the leftovers of a feast of their own.
“Ho, my liege!” said Ýreth, voice warm and slow with alcohol. “Come let us toast your victory. Unless our crown prince has loftier gatherings to attend?”
Fingon should really have scolded them for the poor treatment of their equipment. He did not. “It’s a poor prince who does not make time for the concerns of his people. Move over, loyal subject, and pass me the bottle.”
There were good natured cheers and someone handed him a jug of throat-searing crabapple cider - the lords might drink what wine had come with them out of the west but for the soldiers they must be content with what they could make themselves from forage.
“Play us something, sir,” said serious Pelilasson.
“And compete with my talented cousins? If it’s music you want, you’ll find better in the pavilion where Maglor holds court.”
Ýreth snorted. “We want Fëanorian music little more than we wanted a Fëanorian king. No false modesty, my prince, take up your harp!”
“Well since you ask so nicely.” He had it with him, of course, though there had been no cause to play since the mountain and he was half-drunk besides. His first few notes rang flat and even once he’d picked up the tune he carried it clumsily enough that his tutors in Tirion would have been horrified. But Maethel picked up the melody upon a reed flute and Ýreth dragged Ninaeldis to her feet and into a clumsy jig. Their shadows danced with them and then others of his people leapt up to spin and stamp and sing some ancient, bawdy song. No one knew all the words and those they did remember, no one could agree on but enthusiasm served well in place of skill or knowledge - hadn’t Fingon based his life upon that principle? - and this was imperfect Beleriand. In the light of their bonfire, with his friends and soldiers laughing about him, his father’s plans all come to fruition, none of it seemed to matter.
Fingon played until his fingers were cramped and aching and then put the harp aside and lay back against the cold, damp grass. The brazier’s light and smoke blotted out the stars and he would likely catch a chill but he could not yet find the will to move.
A soldier, still in his mail hauberk, plopped to the ground beside him in a clatter of steel.
“I thought you were on watch?” said Hadlath, passing over a bottle..
“The cripple king ordered me away. I wasn’t inclined to argue.” The man - Rawon, it sounded like - coughed. “Manwë’s feathery balls, this stuff is vile.” He swigged again.
Fingon sat up and Rawon exploded into a coughing fit. “Begging your pardon, my lord,” he said when he could speak again, his eyes streaming.
Rawon had lost a lover to the seas and so Fingon let the insult go. “What was my cousin doing upon the walls?” he asked neutrally.
“He didn’t say, sir. Sir, we followed you across the Ice and I don’t see that we should take orders from him.”
“No indeed. I’ll speak with him now. A good evening to you all.” Fingon got to his feet, wincing at his forgotten blisters, and walked away from the circle of firelight, his soldiers’ farewells ringing in his ears.
***
He found Maedhros standing atop the wall upon north-facing parapet, leaning out over the sheer drop to the staked trenches below. He had his right arm wrapped around a flagpole for balance and a jug in his left hand.
“Fingon,” he said without turning. Flat and tired. What had it come to that it was a relief to hear his cousin openly unhappy?
“Should you be up here?”
“I doubt it. But I’ve had a bellyfull of ‘shoulds’ and a bellyfull of this-” he held up the decanter “-whatever ‘this’ is, and find myself past caring.”
Fingon reached up and took the jug - near empty - and swigged from it, his free hand held ready to grab for his cousin if he overbalanced. Or stepped out. Raw alcohol burned his throat and made his eyes water. “Rawon said you sent him from his post.”
“That’s so. It’s difficult to feel truly maudlin when there’s a guardsman picking his nose five feet away.” Maedhros took back the flask, drained it and then, abruptly, let it drop. The tinkling of pottery rose up from beneath them like a song. “I don’t want you to see me drunk and wallowing in self pity. I wish you hadn’t come.”
“I think you’re entitled to a little self pity. Come down,” he added hastily as Maedhros leant out further, staring down at the broken shards. “I’m getting a sore neck looking up at you.”
Maedhros smiled his awful smile and hopped down onto the walkway, stumbling a little, clearly drunker than Fingon had first thought. “I swore to myself that I’d hold together until after the coronation. Some oaths I can keep.”
“It’s all done with now. You needn’t pretend for me.”
“Should I fall, weeping, into your arms then?” Maedhros stepped closer, close enough that Fingon could feel his breath upon his cheek, sharp with alcohol. He shivered and Maedhros smiled to see it.
“If you think it would help.”
“I doubt it. I’ve never been much for tears.” He looked away to the north where the sky was cut by the black jags of the mountains. “Maglor’s right,” he said at length. “It will make a good song. Your father will be a good king.” He closed his eyes. “I’m tired.”
“You’re drunk. I’ll see you to your bed.”
“Will you?” Maedhros made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh. “You’re so dependable. But it’s not a bed I need. I did not come up here for the view. I’m not so strong as I thought.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Fingon said. A lie. They were both liars.
“You do.” Maedhros opened his eyes again. They were silvered by the moonlight, dark and deep enough to drown in. “Please. It’s like you said; I’ve asked you twice for help. The third time pays for all.”
“No.” He’d known Maedhros was hurting and unhappy but he’d been healing. Fingon had saved him.
“I’d do it myself if I could. But I swore an oath.” Left-handed, Maedhros reached out to brush a loose tendril of hair back from Fingon’s face and let his fingers linger, resting upon his cheek. His touch burned as though with fever. “Fingon. Fingon. If you love me, if you have ever loved me-”
Love, Fingon thought, was a selfish, monstrous thing. “No,” he said.
Maedhros nodded as though he had expected as much. “Well then,” he said. And then his hand fisted in Fingon’s hair and he drove his knee into his gut.
Fingon gasped and staggered, more shocked than hurt. But he was Fingon the Valiant, not the Wise or the Kind, and so before the pain had even registered his own hand was curled into a fist.
He swung - his full strength behind it - and caught Maedhros in the jaw, snapping his head around and sending him reeling back against the parapet.
Fingon was afraid to look at his face, to see his eyes gone blank and dead as Dineneth’s had been. But when Maedhros straightened there was no lack of expression there, rather the opposite; his eyes were a horror of rage and pain, everything he had kept hidden exposed like maggots writhing in an opened corpse.
He grinned or snarled and came on again, and Fingon met him with his fists because perhaps Maedhros needed this or perhaps Fingon was angry too, had been angry for thirty years. He had been abandoned and betrayed and failed and now this. The rest he might forgive but how could anyone that loved him ask him this?
His elbow caught his cousin in the side where he knew there was a wound half-healed, and Maedhros muffled his cry of pain by sinking his teeth into Fingon’s neck. Their legs tangled and they both went down - Fingon remembered himself enough to ensure he hit the ground first, taking the brunt of the impact.
Maedhros got his right forearm across Fingon’s throat and pressed down, all his weight behind it, and for a moment, as his vision darkened, Fingon was almost afraid. But he was stronger and heavier and had two hands besides. He punched Maedhros in the side, the same place as before, and, when his cousin gasped and slackened his grip, Fingon rolled them over and straddled his hips, pinning his wrists above his head.
Maedhros bucked against him but a half-starved crippled stood little chance against a healthy man and finally he snarled with frustration and slammed his own head back against the wood. “What does it take?” he said, the words coming out as a sob.
Fingon said nothing. There was nothing he could say.
Maedhros struggled beneath him once more, a final, hopeless surge of defiance, and then went still. “You never should have come.”
“And yet I did. I always will.” He was a hero after all, renowned amongst the princes of the Noldor.
His anger was as swiftly cooled as kindled and he relaxed his grip - being pinned so was doubtless painful for Maedhros’ arm - but didn’t move to get off him. Maedhros did not attack him again but lay quiet, trembling a little with cold or the aftermath of violence. His face was pale and there was blood on his lips, Fingon’s or his own.
All words of comfort or reassurance Fingon might offer sounded trite or shallow even to himself. He could speak of duty, of the oath, of Maedhros’ little brothers, but that would be far too cruel. He had wished, often enough, for a way that he could help, a use for courage and a sharp blade. Well here it was.
But his knife stayed in its sheath. “I said you were entitled to a little self pity but this is ridiculous,” he said, his stomach aching, his neck torn and bloody. “You’ve always been an embarrassing drunk.”
Maedhros stared at him, pale and fey and desperate, for a long, long time. And Fingon saw his face close up, the terror and the anger and the hurt vanish behind that practiced, pasted on smile. He began to laugh and Fingon laughed with him; his gut ached so badly he could scarcely draw breath but that only made him laugh the harder.
“You’re right,” Maedhros said when they could speak again. “You’re right, what was I thinking? This is worse than the time we tried to distill our own mead and I drank two jars and vomited under the dining table.”
Fingon rolled over to lie on the planking at Maedhros’ side. “And then Huan ate it. And threw up over that rug your grandmother wove and I’ve never seen your father so angry-”
“I think he was angrier then than he was when he had your father held at swordpoint.”
“Surely! Angrier than when Morgoth killed Grandfather Finwë.”
“If the Enemy had stolen that rug and not the Silmarils, he might have torn down the walls of Angband barehanded to get it back.”
“Can you imagine the oath you would have taken over that?” It wasn’t funny. None of it was funny. But they could joke or Fingon could take up his knife. “What now?” he said more soberly.
“I think I’m too drunk to make it down the stairs.” Wincing, Maedhros pulled himself up to sit leaning against the battlements. “And too sore - you’re stronger than you know.”
“Do you need a healer?”
“You’re not that strong.”
“Don’t start fights you can’t win.”
“You’d think I would have learnt by now.” Maedhros held out his hand. “Stay with me. The night’s not so cold and the sunrise will be lovely. If they’d had them while I was hanging upon that mountain, it would still have been unbearable but marginally less so.”
Fingon thought that their views of what ‘not so cold’ entailed were somewhat skewed but he took the hand and let Maedhros draw him over to sit beside him, bodies not quite touching.
There was a way to mend this. There had to be. For the orcs and for Dineneth and all the people like her that he had not saved. They’d come to build a better world and he would start with this.
“I’m sorry,” Maedhros whispered, sounding half asleep already. “I didn’t mean any of it. I’m glad you came. I’m strong enough for this.”
“I know,” said Fingon. They were both liars after all.
***
“We are outnumbered,” Ýreth said. She tugged back her coif to run a hand through hair spiked with sweat and blood.
“We shan’t be for long,” said Fingon. The mud came to his shins, the corpses of their dead the only safe footing to be found. That had ceased to bother him long hours ago. “There are only two thousand of them by my reckoning.”
“And we have near a tenth of that! It is hardly fair,” she said with weary humour.
“I could take them all alone but I fear you would be frightfully bored.”
No one laughed. There was no joy in this, no honour, no glory. Still his soldiers stood with him, grim faced, their bright steel dimmed with blood and grime. Still they would die for him. That had also ceased to bother him.
“What of my brother?” he asked, adjusting the lie of his helmet. It was dented and no longer sat right.
“Withdrawn, with all his host about him.”
“Good. And Maedhros?”
“The Fëanorians won free. I don’t know that he lives-”
“He does. He must. He swore an oath.” Whatever happened next, he had salvaged something. They could not take that away.
“As you say. My king, what are your orders?”
“With me, all of you. Ýreth, Gulben, Hadlath. Everyone. Remember why we came.”
Ýreth pulled her coif back down. “To beat some sense into your idiot uncle?”
“Picture all the orcs as Fëanor if it helps. But no.” Beneath his feet, his dead stared up with pale, accusing eyes. The tide of battle was shifting. They did not have time. “It doesn’t matter. Thank you all for your service.”
Fingon the Valiant raised his sword and went to meet his death.